Jason's Untimely Thoughts

Sarah’s monument is scheduled to be installed Saturday morning.  The folks from the monument company will drive from Memphis on Friday afternoon, then start working first thing Saturday morning.  Since it’s a football weekend, my tailgating routine will also be going.  I’ll get up about 7:00, go to the store and pick up whatever else I need, then go set up the tailgate.

Since I can see Sarah’s grave from our house and backyard, I’m guessing the first thing I’ll see Saturday morning when I get up is them starting to work.  Whether that’s true or not, I’ll certainly go out there Saturday morning in the brief period between setting up the tailgate and going back to the tailgate.  So, I should be a ball of fun for the game.  Throw in that it’s a work tailgate, which I generally don’t enjoy any where near as much and yay football.

I’m also surprisingly ambivalent about the monument being put in place.  I have a solid 100 emails on the subject over the past 16 months.  I’ve drawn and revised and approved and nodded and signed on all of it.  I was anxious to have it done this time a year ago, but now I’m mostly of the opinion that it doesn’t matter.  I already know there are things I’d do differently, even before I’ve seen it.  I’m worried that it’s so big that it’ll look obnoxious.   Mostly, though, I’m sure, is just that it’s a very obvious reminder of the situation and the permanence of it.

We’ve also long known that the fence in our backyard is set too far into the cemetery, meaning they own some of “our” backyard.  Unfortunately, they’ve decided now is a good time to move that fence.  I don’t blame them and they’re doing nothing wrong, but it still sucks to lose part of what’s effectively been the backyard of our property for the past 70 years or better.  And then of course I’d underestimated how much was actually their property.  And they’re going to put the same old ugly fence back up.  Yay cemetery.

Lack of transition, we had a great trip to Colorado last weekend.  The kids went snow sledding for the first time, which made me realize how awful it was that I’d never taken them sledding before.  Stupid things like that hit me harder than they should, as it seems we’re not able to just have random fun very often.  Every day is a schedule, a routine that leads to bed time, which doesn’t leave much time for art projects, playing with moon sand, riding bikes, or going snow sledding.  I know they each have fun at school, so they’re doing OK, I’d just also like them to have fun at home.  I’m able to plan fun, but spontaneous fun doesn’t happen much for them, I’m sad to say.

Further randomness, when we first moved back to Columbia from San Antonio, my office at Columbia College was the only one in the entire building I was in.  So, I’d go for hours on end, days occasionally, without seeing or talking to anyone other than saying hello.  It was weird and after a few weeks I felt like I was losing my ability to function in social settings.   The past year has felt much the same way on a personal level, as most of my time is either spent discussing work, talking to the kids, or sitting in silence.  It’s made stupid things, like writing my unfunny tailgate emails, harder to do.  And the sitting in silence provides way too much time for thinking, to the point where I feel numb much of the time when I’m home and the kids are in bed.  So I turn on the TV or play stupid games on my phone (or check facebook and twitter), all things that clearly improve communication and awaken from numbness.

Positive closing, I’m thankful for those in Denver that helped us take that trip, for the Tigers winning football games again, and the things that make me laugh — stupidity-proof helmets, pole dancers, idiotic direct deposit questions, purple things, and the majority of the state to our west, for example.